I switched sketchbooks. These won't be in my Sketchbook Journal project any more, since I've been running short of pages. I picked up a half used 8" x 5 1/2" Strathmore sketchbook to continue as long as the class continues. He'll still be doing daily classes till the 22nd.

Here's the first three pages of my notes for tonight:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/10-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-10-1.jpg

Thanks for continuing to share the class notes. I can't make it to all these and am very thankful for your note taking. Just reading your notes has opened my eyes to possibilities.

eyepaint

12-10-2010, 11:20 PM

This is an online course - yes? Thanks for sharing :) :) :)

seejay

12-11-2010, 12:21 AM

Thanks very much for posting these Robert. Unfortunately I can't hook up to the seminar, not the right operation system, so I shall study your comprehensive and fun notes.

robertsloan2

12-11-2010, 01:10 AM

Yep, this is an online class that Johannes Vloorthuis is offering free until Dec. 22nd when his free trial of the webinar software ends. Every afternoon at 5pm Eastern time he starts. It's scheduled for an hour but actually runs three or four and it's incredible.

He mentioned he might skip Sunday though, give us a day off to digest everything.

LadyMadonna

12-11-2010, 09:33 AM

Thank you so much for posting this as well. I am new to this site and to painting and someone kindly sent me the link to the webinar. I was enthralled listening to it all and totally loved it. I am going to copy your notes as I had wished I had a pen in hand at the time. Next time I will....thank you so much for allowing me to share in this amazing forum.

pezk

12-11-2010, 10:04 AM

Hi Robert,
wonderful notes. What was the rational for angling the corners of the bldgs so it is not parallel to the edge of the paper? Doesn't the viewer notice the discrepancy?
very helpful to post these notes.
What is the web address for this seminar?
I always like looking at your work.
thx
pat

robertsloan2

12-11-2010, 11:58 PM

Pat, the idea of angling the corners of a bridge or the sides of a building to not match the edge of the paper is to keep the building or bridge from looking dull and mechanical like an engineering diagram. Landscape painters choose older buildings that sag and splinter and have irregular, melodic lines rather than brand new perfectly plumb-edged buildings to paint for that reason - they have more character.

A little erosion does wonders. A few bricks sticking out or a slight slump to the roof will make all the difference and not necessarily make it look like a shack. Anything that breaks hard straight lines, angles or perfect hemisphere curves helps make the painting more interesting.

Here's the first batch of tonight's 12 pages of notes! Class ran very long and Johannes hung out just showing examples and talking even after it sort of ended, sharing secret after secret.

Pat, the idea of angling the corners of a bridge or the sides of a building to not match the edge of the paper is to keep the building or bridge from looking dull and mechanical like an engineering diagram. Landscape painters choose older buildings that sag and splinter and have irregular, melodic lines rather than brand new perfectly plumb-edged buildings to paint for that reason - they have more character.

A little erosion does wonders. A few bricks sticking out or a slight slump to the roof will make all the difference and not necessarily make it look like a shack. Anything that breaks hard straight lines, angles or perfect hemisphere curves helps make the painting more interesting.

Here's the first batch of tonight's 12 pages of notes! Class ran very long and Johannes hung out just showing examples and talking even after it sort of ended, sharing secret after secret.

Next batch includes the Oils Palette that I've been asking him about - very different from my favorite pigments in watercolors. I'm going to at least try his palette, though I might come back to my own it'll help to understand how to use these colors.

Thank you! So glad you're enjoying them. I post them in the Landscape forum too but they're filling this sketchbook thoroughly. I did one page in this one that isn't from the class, I'll include that at the end.

robertsloan2

12-14-2010, 10:28 PM

Next batch -

robertsloan2

12-14-2010, 10:31 PM

Last batch, 13 in all. Plus the concept sketches for a fallen tree that's still surviving after getting blasted over either at an angle or actually flat.

pezk

12-15-2010, 11:18 AM

Thank you Robert for posting these wonderful notes. There is so much to think about and digest and practice in these lectures.
thx again

robertsloan2

12-15-2010, 11:00 PM

No kidding! That's why I take them - it's a lot to take in all at once. It's helping though. Also some points are starting to repeat with different examples and that helps too.

There is so much here. I think there is a full art course just in today's notes, let alone all the others you've posted. Thanks again.

jacquip

12-16-2010, 09:38 PM

Robert this is awesome. I managed to sit in for a bit yesterday and today and learned so much in that short time. Even watching the critiques is very helpful. Thanks so much for sharing all this. Part of the paying it forward with the creative consciousness :)

robertsloan2

12-17-2010, 01:05 AM

Thank you both! I'm learning so much - and writing this out, sketching the little examples helps me retain it so much. I think sketching the little examples does a lot for my right brain retaining it too.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/16-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-16-4.jpg
Johannes asked me to fill in the areas a little more solidly in my sketches, so I'm trying to do that. It isn't always easy though when I'm trying to draw fast and keep up with the lecture while doing the illos!

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/16-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-16-5.jpg
The diagram at the top for No Fly Zone is a new little nugget expanding on an old one. Not all sides of the No Fly Zone are equal. Clouds chasing off the top are nowhere near the problem that things jabbing in from the bottom are and the sides aren't as important as that "first step into the painting." I hope that diagram helps make it clearer!

This one has the best reflected-color sketch I've ever done. I love reflected color and keep trying to do it in Pitt pens, but I'm proud of this tiny example. The values are accurate! Notice the reflected-color highlight is just one step lighter than the table but nowhere near as light as the highlight on the light gray shell. Or even the light gray part of the light gray shell - it's shiny and its highlight is white, accurate.
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/18-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-17-3.jpg

My go at getting cute writing the types of light in the colors it happens to be. Presume that you've got a red wheelbarrow or something reflecting.
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/18-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-17-7.jpg

EP and Debby, thank you! I'm so glad I can share this information to those who can't attend the classes, they are pure gold.

DrDebby

12-19-2010, 01:15 AM

I know I sound like a broken record. But, thank you yet again. This is just awesome information.

robertsloan2

12-19-2010, 07:02 PM

Thanks! It is. I'm awed. Only three more webinars to go. I mean to get as much as I can in all of them and share it by way of these notes.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/19-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Video-Dec-19-1.jpg
Used the big brush pens for that brushwork example. Didn't overlap completely because I wanted the strokes showing to show the pattern. In oils I'd overlap them completely and use a flat brush.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/19-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Video-Dec-19-2.jpg
Big Brush again in green and brown.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/19-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Video-Dec-19-3.jpg
Hard pastels for the Pinkish Grayish Bush, didn't try to get that in Pitt pens.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/19-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Video-Dec-19-4.jpg
Whoops, just a page of text.

robertsloan2

12-19-2010, 07:08 PM

Four more pages of notes including today's Experiment.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/19-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Video-Dec-19-5.jpg
Rocks in water is such a fantastic effect and so simple to do. Seeing him do it was wonderful.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/19-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Video-Dec-19-6.jpg
My Experiment: sketching trees in gouache badly and then cutting into them with the sky color to give the whole a better shape, then reorganizing the highlights and shadows inside the shape doing both positive and negative with each stroke. It worked, to my happy surprise. Got to do more gouache painting.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/19-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Video-Dec-19-7.jpg
Just a pen sketch...

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/19-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Video-dec-19-8.jpg
And a cartoon at the end since I had space left.

DrDebby

12-19-2010, 08:29 PM

I know Johannes works in oils. Does this apply to other media such as water color or colored pencils or pastels or acrylics?

Artlike

12-20-2010, 12:25 AM

I just found this.........so very good...even a little intimidating ...thanks for sharing.

Ed

robertsloan2

12-20-2010, 06:08 AM

Debby, yes! Other than a few oils specific notes, most of this applies in all of my mediums. I also found out in the last set of notes that gouache handles exactly like Johannes's oils, his techniques work great for it as long as I use it right from the tube instead of trying to reconstitute it or thin it.

Pastels, everything transposes pretty much the same. One thing I'd suggest in pastels is breaking your sticks and using them on their sides to get similar texture strokes and scumbling strokes. I did a landscape in Unison pastels based on his class that came out great. Also did an oil pastels landscape that worked out better than ever before.

For watercolor, he's also a watercolorist and talks about it sometimes. He likes watercolors with special effects, crazy textures, playful stuff, spattering, scraping, salt, all the things that make watercolor wild and unpredictable.

For colored pencils all the design stuff would be tremendously useful. The main thing about colored pencils is that realism is the style that really knocks people out, so in colored pencils painting I'll be working hard to get color harmony and unified masses. That could work well but it'd take planning out the painting well first, getting the darks connected, controlling values. I think realist landscapes done in this style could be spectacular.

He's said several times that these principles are not about style or to constrain style, they are tricks and tips for doing landscapes that work no matter what your style is. A good 85% of it is "all mediums" stuff.

I'm enjoying the oils specific techniques too because compared to everything else I do, my oil paintings stink. I just never got the feel of oils right, not in realism and not in impressionism. A lot of that is lack of practice but that's balanced with lack of good instruction too.

Ed, it's been that for me too. Incredibly good and also stressful, intimidating. That's a lot of why I'm doing these notes. The information's now recorded in a form that I can go back to it again and again later on, take my time digesting it and work on applying it to everything I paint or even draw.

I'd say pick out something specific from it and try it, work on it in a few sketches or paintings, then come back to try another one, work at your own pace rather than try to take it in all at once. I have more notes in my Coffee, Cigarettes and Cat Hair thread from the first few days of the class when I was filling up that journal.

RainySea

12-20-2010, 04:06 PM

After seeing your latest OP painting, Robert, I'm for sure going to make time during my winter break to read through and study these notes! Only two more work days to go after today before that arrives. . . cannot wait! Thanks for sharing all your notes.

robertsloan2

12-21-2010, 12:08 AM

Rainy, thank you! I've learned so much in these three weeks that it's a quantum leap. I looked back over my 2010 art on Facebook and all my old landscapes look horrible, unbalanced, contrived, artificial... funny how a designed landscape can look more lively and natural than one that follows nature by copying the photo. Ironic in the extreme, but otherwise we'd all be photographers.

Just got my Blick package today with replacement Pigma Micron pens and a Rotring ArtPen. Very glad too because I'd been using up my last pen and was down to using ball points on notes! So tonight has more pen sketching and less Pitt pen sketching since I was playing with the new pen.
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/20-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-20-2.jpg

Third batch! As always there were some new tips and tricks tonight that he'd never mentioned before, interspersed with new descriptions of familiar material. I think this is helping me understand melodic line and abstract shapes a lot better!
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/20-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-20-9.jpg

New object! New tricks!

Ever since 1998, or even before, I've had in the back of my mind a plan to do a series of night scenes on highways going through rolling hills. Some of them are past well-lit places like an industrial park I passed on the road once, others just the headlights and the highway and the blue or orange sky with signs looming out of the dark and trees silhouetted black against the color. This will help me get the highway scenes right.
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/20-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-20-10.jpg

Something so many friends have trouble with. Johannes explained it so well!
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/20-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-20-11.jpg

oh, man you take great notes! I was able to sneak in at work for most of this workshop yesterday but I did not even come close to picking up on all the tips you wrote here. Maybe from being that I had missed all the others, I was so behind. But I will catch up through your notes. . . are they all in this thread or which thread do they begin in? I'm thinking maybe one of your other journal threads? Want to start at the beginning to study them. . . thanks :)

robertsloan2

12-22-2010, 10:16 PM

Rainy, thank you! My notes begin in the "Coffee, Cigarettes and Cat Hairs" journal thread with about page 44 of that journal, then continue here after I switched sketchbooks. I finished up this sketchbook tonight and the last three pages are on a brand new one that'll get its own thread!

So skim through Coffee, Cigs & Cat Hair to find the beginning of the notes if you want to start from the beginning.

First four pages:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/22-Dec-2010/70184-Class-Dec-22-1.jpg

This is the end, the last batch of notes from the Johannes Vloothuis Landscape Class. He will be doing some classes in January but I'll be in a different sketchbook when I take notes. The last three pages here are in a new one anyway.

I miss it already, don't have tomorrow's class to look forward to. But I've got a powerful itch to paint and try all this out again!

DrDebby

12-23-2010, 12:43 AM

Wow, just wow! Thanks.

robertsloan2

12-23-2010, 11:04 PM

Purr thank you! You stayed with me on all of these commenting and keeping me posting, that's encouraged me so much. There's still discussions going on up in the Landscape Forum and he'll be doing new classes in January.